Elven Envy

It was a quiet night in the Hinterlands, with only the sounds of insects in the tall grass and the occasional breeze moving the branches of the trees that dotted the landscape. To Beckyann, it was almost soothing, reminding her very much of her homeland that sat on the other side of the mountains poking skywards in the distance. She'd rarely spent time here, despite the region's close proximity both to her former home and to Acherus, and she was pleasantly surprised that she was enjoying the countryside so much.

Above her the stars twinkled in the perfectly clear sky, the light of the moon shining down and bathing the structures nearby with a cool glow. Beckyann sat on an outcropping of rocks that overlooked the elegant buildings that the Quel'dorei had constructed in the middle of the wilderness, her baleful eyes soaking in the details of the place as she pondered the nature of the people there.

Elves were radically different than humans in many ways, including their outlook and long-term views, the way they crafted and shaped magic, and their sense of beauty. When growing up, Beckyann had few encounters with the denizens of Quel'Thalas, her sleepy little town getting few travelers from that realm and none that paused to speak with the poorest of the relatively poor community. As she grew older and began her own magical studies, elves had always been distant, aloof creatures. Always better than her at magic, she had learned to respect them and to maintain a wary distance from them while she worked and trained under the Kirin Tor.

When the plague had come to Lordaeron, Beckyann had given little thought to the surrounding kingdoms. She had been so wrapped up in her own world and her own ambitions that the fate of neighboring Quel'Thalas had meant little to her. The irony that she had died only a few miles from the border of that realm and that her passing had happened long before theirs was not lost on her as she now sat and watched the refugees of the once proud nation.

Beckyann had dealt with Sin'dorei. She knew how they operated, how they fought, and the viciousness of their intrigues. She'd had many run-ins with the creatures, and many had fallen to her runeblade over the years. She knew how they dressed, how they talked, and envied the elegance and grace they displayed even in battle. It enraged her at times, made her lash out at them with more fury so she could break the people that were making her feel that way.

The envy was easily placed when she thought about it long enough. Although it was difficult for Beckyann to admit, it was clear that elves were more beautiful, more graceful and lithe than she could ever be. Even in life this had been true, and in undeath they represented an ultimate perfection that neither magic nor cosmetics could actually attain. She could steal the clothes from their dead, tailor her outfits perfectly and have her makeup and hair arranged just so, and she would still only partially attain what each of them was born with. It made her furious sometimes.

That she had gained in undeath something of their nature was a fact that was only just starting to dawn on Beckyann as the years passed. She was, in a sense, immortal now, doomed to wander Azeroth forevermore as a spirit chained within the flesh of her corpse. Human lives would begin and end in time, and she would carry on beyond them, until even the memory of her people and the time in which she lived was a distant, dusty record in a tome somewhere. Like the elves, she had an immensely long amount of time to ponder the mysteries of the world and to evolve beyond what she was currently.

She also would suffer that entire time.

Again she felt a stab of envy flow through her as she glared hatefully at the buildings below. She paused, holding perfectly still as she mentally schooled her mind back into a tranquil state. It was a difficult process for a Death Knight to choke down her rage and bitter feelings, and something that Beckyann rarely forced herself to do, but there was no one to vent them on here. What was she going to do, beat a rock with her runeblade?

She smirked, idly counting the sentries she could spot in the Quel'dorei settlement below, considering what she'd seen of these people so far. Unlike the Sin'dorei, they were less impulsive, less prone to passionate outbursts and essentially less like Beckyann. They plotted though; they conducted intrigue amongst themselves that the Corin's Crossing girl knew would be beyond her grasp if she tried to analyze them. So what did that make them? Friends or foes? Or did it matter? In the end she would exist even after they were long ash and dust on the wind.

Still, there was one possibility of a positive nature that could be gleaned from them. Perhaps she could learn something of their elegance, their charm. Perhaps she could apply that to herself, and better perfect her exterior shell with which she was so proud. Vanity was not beyond her after all. Beckyann smirked as the thought crossed her mind and she rose from the rock, still undecided about the creatures below her.

She paused for a moment, tilting her head as if sensing something on the breeze. She suddenly lurched, her runeblade drawn in one swift motion as she spun in a circle. The blade came to rest with the tip just touching the hollow of an elf's throat, the blue glow of his gaze matching her own perfectly in the darkness. She smirked at him, her voice a soft purr in the night, "You'd be dead, elf."

The Quel'dorei sentry grinned at her, his gaze shifting down to where his own hand pressed a long dagger against her, the tip having already slipping between the armored plates at her groin, "You'd join me."

Beckyann rolled her eyes, withdrawing her runeblade and sheathing it, "That is not how you destroy one of my kind. If you believe I have blood flowing down there...you're a terrible assassin."

"And you are a terrible spy," the Quel'dorei responded, slipping his dagger back into its sheathe.

Beckyann turned towards him again, blinking and stuttering, "I-I wasn't spying! I was looking! A-and I'm perfectly g-good at espionage when I feel like it."

"Uh huh," the elf replied dryly.

It was infuriating of course. It was exactly what Red would have said. Beckyann threw her hands in the air in exasperation, turning and muttering a few words of magic. A dark portal opened, the howling winds of the Shadow Realm echoing from it. She gave the elf one more baleful look before she stepped through and returned to Acherus. The pout on her face when she stepped through the other side of the portal was enough to make the guards there avoid eye contact with her as she stalked towards her chambers.

She still don't know how she felt about Quel'dorei exactly, but she did know how she felt about people being rude!